Nos' Den of Iniquity

Hello! I am updating you from the Canadian Wilderness! (aka Camp Crystal Lake, aka Nos' Crazy Camp for the Blind)

Today is my day off. I am digging this whole "not having to work" thing, because as much fun as I'm having, this place is a LOT of work. And the real summer season hasn't even started, because our first group of campers don't arrive until June 8th. But there is a LOT of pre-season stuff to prepare, and so far I have accomplished the following tasks:


-Written a "How to Tandem Cycle" manual, including lesson plans, a ride guide, and a list of "stuff you shouldn't do because it will cause maiming and death" tipsheet.

-Researched and written a grant proposal for a new reclining tandem bike, which can be operated by kids under 10 and some of our clients who have other mobility/coordination issues beyond their visual impairments.

-Organized a Women's Weekend Retreat, including workshops (pottery! watercolours! massage!) and event programming. I now know far more than I ever wanted to about kyaking, sailing and how to make silly hats.

-Contacted about 30,002000ljasdghbf volunteers, and recruited exactly....8. I need more warm bodies here, people! I've got all these slots to fill, and very few people who are free over the summer and willing to come and volunteer at the camp. So, hey, f-list, anyone want to come hang out in the wilderness with ol' Nos and work with some blind kids? Room and board included!

-Created a staff orientation manual, and made welcome packages for our staff of 30. I now see tiny notebooks, safety whistles and bottles of bugspray in my sleep.

-Cleaned out all of the many cupboards and drawers in our administration office. I have found the weirdest shit. I mean, someone left a wet suit in our Lost & Found. There was a foam shark hat with googly eyes in our fridge. Many, many packages of laminating pouches (although we do not, it is worth noting, actually have a laminator). A didgeridoo. About a thousand pens that no longer work. And many, many mystery Brailled papers, which no one in the office can actually read except Bill, the new camp manager.

-Spent ALL FRICKIN' DAY on the phone yesterday with Tech Services at the CNIB AND Hewlitt-Packard trying to network our Braille printer. It was hilarious when I got the two IT guys on a conference call together. Dueling nerd tech-speak has never been so amusing, because they both had very heavy Quebecois accents and were equally condescending. ("Yes, but you need to plug in the printer before it will work." "Oh, yes, I know, but the printer is still not active. Is the IP address correct? The IP address is what we use to identify the printer on the network...")

Anyway. The fun never stops here at Camp Crystal Lake. Beyond camp stuff, I have accomplished very little. I begin work at 8am and finish around 5pm (usually later if there's a big project on the go) and then we make a group dinner for all the staff in the HUGE industrial kitchen. 25 of our staff of 30 are visually-impaired, so we usually cook in teams of 2 or 3 with a sighted person (me, or one of the drivers) supervising. This process involves me watching my coworkers a) bang into things or be b) narrowly avoid accidentally burning themselves on the massive 20-burner stove. I'm alternatively amazed at how much people with limited/nonexistent sight can do, and a bit worried that the camp will burn down.

After dinner finishes at 7pm/7:30pm, we head outdoors to do outdoorsy-things (walking, biking, sitting by the lake, building a campfire) but usually the blackflies drive us indoors by 8:30pm/9pm. I retreat to my luxurious twin-sized bunk bed in the Wellness Centre (which I'm sharing with the head admin, Melissa, and shortly with a third counsellor, Katie, who arrives tonight) and, because I am OMG EXHAUSTED, watch two episodes of Supernatural, and go right to sleep. Sometimes I dream of the Winchesters, which is good, but sometimes I dream about ghosts and demons. Which is bad. And then I get up and do it all over again.

So, thus far it's lots of fun, and lots of hard work. I haven't written anything in days and days, or done much more than check my f-list and email in little snatches during the day, and so I miss you guys like crazy. I went home for the Victoria Day long weekend and mostly slept, spent quality time with scarfe and my cat, and watched movies. (And finished/formatted meresy's Fraser/Kowalski birthday story for posting, which OMG took forever!) Bill, Melissa and I rented a car to get us back to the Toronto region, and...well, when blind people tell you that they can "navigate", you can either choose to believe them, or print off mapquest directions and pray. I decided to do the former. We did arrive at one piece and I got everyone to their various Toronto destinations, but it was not without a lot of pain, heartache, U-turns, and three or four trips down the wrong side of the QEW.

Whoever designed Toronto's freeway system is an evil, evil person who hopefully died a painful death being eaten by wild dogs.

Anyway, it was a fun roadtrip, Bill is pretty much the most hilarious person I've ever met, and we played lots of car games and listened to Soft Rock AM radio (because we are awesome). I accomplished very little on my three days off, and so hopefully I can make up some of the ground today. And resist the urge to spend most of the day in bed napping and watching SPN and working on my Big Bang fic. (16 days! CRAP!)

Okay! So that is your update from the Canadian wilderness! I love you all, and I miss you very much! Please send me email!

And I'm totally serious - come and volunteer! Spend a couple of weeks up here in the unspoiled Canadian wilderness! It's a perfect vacation spot, and I can promise catered meals, hot showers, and risk of death by foam shark hat. /sells it